


Honest Hearts Prologue

by Mortissimo



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: M/M, Out of Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortissimo/pseuds/Mortissimo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel never met Elder Graham, and he never met the Malpais Legate, but he knew Joshua Graham, and Joshua Graham knew him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honest Hearts Prologue

    Daniel had never, that he could remember, seen Elder Graham's face. He supposed they must have trained together, but after long enough missionaries all looked the same even to other missionaries. If they'd been sent away together, of course, things would have been different in so many ways, but they were not. Elder Graham the linguist was sent to convert the Blackfoot and Daniel the student of medicine went to the Sorrows. Then history happened, mostly to Joshua. Elder Graham became the Malpais Legate became the Burned Man became Joshua. Daniel stayed Daniel, completing his two years with his eminently forgettable Brother.  
    He returned to New Canaan the same week as the prodigal himself, but Daniel didn't remember meeting Joshua on the way. He didn't remember ever speaking to Joshua before New Canaan was in flames, the White Legs eerily silent but for the report of their guns. The New Canaanites had in no way prepared for such an assault, but all around him the chaos was organizing (as would become apparent, it was too little and too late, but at the time Daniel was impressed), into those who searched the buildings for the wounded and dying, and those who defended their brothers and sisters as they fled the city.  
    Daniel was the former, and though later he was accused of heroism by those who had never known him before, at the time what moved him was not terror for his own life, or really for the life of others, but terror that he would wake up tomorrow and find himself alone. He didn't know how many he saved, or even if he saved anyone. He dragged bodies from buildings without checking on them, leaving the job to the next would-be rescuer, and moved on to the next and the next and the next, until finally he came to the hospital. He was certainly not the first to search the hospital, but the building was one of the first hit. The flames had spread to most of the visible parts of the building, and by then most were beginning to write it off. Daniel never knew if the screams he heard were real or in his imagination, but he went. Inside, the the only sound was the roar of the fire, more unnerving than the gunfire and the screams outside. Daniel shouldered his way through door after door, but he could no longer hear screaming and he didn't know if that was a good sign or bad. All things considered, it was probably lucky he made it as far as he did, but Daniel's luck was not infinite. The last door he crashed through spat out flame and smoke in a rush that broke through Daniel's horrified trance and sent him reeling, crashing back into the opposite wall.  
    It only felt like a moment that the world went black, but when Daniel opened his eyes again New Canaan was already in the distance and growing smaller amid the rising plumes of smoke.  
    "You're awake." Joshua's voice was still rough in those days. Daniel sat up, slowly and painfully, wincing when the motion of the brahmin cart knocked him gently against the side. Daniel didn't remember exactly what he said upon seeing Joshua for the first time, bandages and blue eyes. It was probably less charitable than it should have been, so maybe it's better forgotten, but Daniel remembered that it made Joshua laugh.  
    "Where are we going?" Daniel remembered he asked that next, because it made the light in Joshua's eyes dim a little.  
    "I don't know," Joshua rasped after some thought, and it was then that Daniel remembered the Sorrows.  
    What happened then was a little less than history. They got permission to go, they went, the White Legs followed.     There was precious little time for so much as introductions before tribes began dying to the White Legs left and right, and in the early days there was hardly time for thought, let alone prayer. Daniel and Joshua worked together, fought together, and slept only when they could work or fight no more, usually side by side. Daniel couldn't help but notice that Joshua moved easier the longer he went between changing his bandages, but there was something in the man that rebelled at the idea of being dirty regardless. Daniel empathized, but every bitten-off gasp from Joshua in the midst of the act twisted in Daniel like a knife.  
    "I'm a doctor," he said finally, overstating more than a little and weeks later than he should have. Behind him, he heard movement cease, and was very sorely tempted to break Joshua's strict ban on stolen glances during the ordeal.  
    "I can do it myself," Joshua replied evenly, after enough time that it was clear this was not his first choice of response.  
    "I want to help you. Please, let me s-"  
    "Let you _see_?" Joshua snapped, and Daniel flinched. Somehow Joshua had come much closer than Daniel had expected him to be. He had come to rely on the rustle of cloth to mark the burned man's movements, but without the bandages Joshua evidently moved in silence. "Why should I let you gawk at me? For that matter, why should you want to? Don't you get enough entertainment from the savages we have to live with?"  
    "That's not fair," Daniel said softly, and for a long moment Joshua said nothing.  
    "I know. I'm sorry." They both called Angel Cave home in those days, before they'd cleared it of traps and taboo markings, and they shared it alone. It was not the first time Daniel was grateful for this inadvisable privacy. It certainly wasn't the last.  
    "It's all right." It really was, Daniel was somewhat surprised to find. "You're hurting. I understand."  
    "I don't think you do," Joshua said, low but close enough that Daniel felt the wind of the words as Joshua said them, had to repress a shiver and much more besides. "Turn around, if you want to see, and see."  
    Daniel turned, and met Joshua's blue, blue eyes, and Daniel saw. The burned man's skin was a patchwork of whorls and angry red and sagging blisters, and even Daniel was a little surprised to find the swell of emotion he felt was not disgust but rage. It was a rare feeling for him, and burned out quickly, leaving him a little shell-shocked and cold as Joshua's expression creased and stretched into a smile as rare as rain in New Canaan.  
    "I would be grateful if you would help me," Joshua said finally, and turned away to get clean bandages while Daniel's heart hammered against his ribs and he tried to remember how to breathe evenly.  
    Daniel would always be hard-pressed not to feel Joshua's bandaging as a benediction, and the impulse was never harder than that first time. The damp rag was soft under Daniel's hands, but when he drew it across Joshua's raw skin, the burned man hissed no matter how gentle Daniel tried to be. Even the soles of Joshua's feet were scorched and needed care, Daniel taking the weight of Joshua's hands braced on his shoulders as he wound the bandages around Joshua's toes. It was the worst, really, at his extremities; from knees to elbows Joshua was, if not whole, scarred mercifully little. As he rose onto his knees to wind the bandages around Joshua's torso, Daniel found he could no longer pretend to even breathing, but Joshua said nothing when Daniel's hands began to shake as Joshua presented his to be bandaged. Then Joshua rested his bandaged hands on Daniel's head, and Daniel had to shut his eyes, whining soft and unwilling in the back of his throat.  
    "Are you praying?" Joshua's voice was as gentle as the hands carding through Daniel's hair. Daniel nodded, tight-lipped, and lied without saying a word. "You're a good man."  
    "I have always tried to be better than what I am." Daniel's arms folded tightly across his chest in a mockery of prayer.  
    "Don't be," Joshua said shortly, though his hands stayed gentle. "Be you. Be my Jonathan."  
    "Is that hubris?" Daniel had lost, of course. He could never have won. He knew it when he heard Joshua laugh.  
    "Hubris was thinking I could rule the world. Humility is accepting that I have made it worse, and that I must repair what little I can. This is greed."  
    "Not love?" There was a rustle as Joshua knelt before Daniel, and Daniel opened his eyes to meet Joshua's.  
    "Love was doing good works with you at my side. Wanting this, wanting more. This is greed." Joshua cupped Daniel's face in bandaged hands and kissed him with lips ragged from the flames.  
    What happened then was nothing short of inevitable. They kissed, and they kissed, and they kissed, and while Daniel's conscience didn't allow them to make love that night, there were many nights and he was in love.  
    The work of protecting Zion from the consequences of their flight was still the most important thing, though, and as more tribes settled in the slot canyons, Daniel and Joshua had less time together, by necessity of needing to be more than one place at the same time. Daniel tended the tribes' wounds and helped deliver their children, while Joshua taught them scripture. It wasn't until Daniel, after a week apart, came exhausted into Angel Cave that had been their home and found it full of tribesmen, ascended the slope and found Joshua at a table covered with the rusted innards of guns, that he realized scripture was not all Joshua had been teaching.  
    They had fought, then, with sharp words aimed to wound as only lovers can. The tribesmen had gathered at the entrance, uneasy, not understanding the words but hearing their tone clearly enough. When he ran out of accusations Daniel left, his anger already burned out and replaced by a cold knot of fear and regret.  
    When he awoke in the middle of the night, though, it was to an arm around his waist and warm cotton brushing the back of his neck.  
    "I'm sorry," Joshua said. The straw they lay on jabbed Daniel in a thousand tiny places. He could only imagine how it felt to Joshua.  
    "I'm sorry too." Daniel covered Joshua's hand, carefully, with his own, felt Joshua's smile against his skin.  
    The easiest way, after that, was to pretend that they weren't working at cross-purposes. Joshua prepared the tribes for war as Daniel tried to prepare them for flight, searching in vain with what little time he had to himself for the items that would allow their passage. Joshua endlessly prepared weapons while Daniel sent away the weaker of the women, the old and the children, and when Daniel got the news that he had sent Waking Cloud's husband to his death, Joshua found a private place and held him until he could stop shaking.  
    "I forgive you," Daniel remembered Joshua had said to him.  
    "It's not your forgiveness I need," he replied.  
    "Then I love you," Joshua said, to which there was only one reply.  
    Daniel never met Elder Graham, and he never met the Malpais Legate, but he knew Joshua Graham, and Joshua Graham knew him, and though they disagreed and doubted there was nothing that could part them.  
    "I love you," Daniel said.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm from Utah but I'm pretty definitely not Mormon, so weirdness is probably my fault rather than a deliberate choice for the post-apocalypse.
> 
> I also wrote this about halfway through playing Honest Hearts.
> 
> ETA following completion of Honest Hearts: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OH WOW NEVER MIND. NEVER. FUCKING. MIND. OH MY GOD. I'm adding an OOC tag.


End file.
